Page 60 of The Cost of Corruption

It only partially worked.

“Oooh! You’re cursing now, too. Matteo’s been a bad influence on you, hasn’t he? I like it,” she noted with another laugh before getting back to it. “Anyway, Uncle was mad as hell when you didn’t come home after my bachelorette party, but he really went over the edge when he heard from a couple of his men that you screwed Matteo right in the middle of Bianco’s restaurant.”

“Oh God.” The air left my lungs in a rush.

This couldn’t be happening. Somehow I knew that momentary lapse in judgment was going to come back to bite me in the ass.

“So, it’s true?” Alessia gasped, seeming as shocked as I was—albeit for different reasons. “I said there was no way a repressed tight-ass like you wouldeverdo something as wild as that. Butholy shit, girl, you really are determined to go out in a blaze of glory, aren’t you?”

“What did he say, Alessia?” I pleaded with her to focus. “Whatexactlydid he say?”

“For the last week, he’s been storming around the house, shouting about how if everyone in the family is too chickenshit to take on the D’Angelos, then he’d teach Matteo a lesson on his own.”

I shook my head. That didn’t make sense. “So, he’s targeting Matteo?”

“I thought that at first, too.” Alessia’s tone had turned conspiratorial, almost like she was gossiping about the plot of a soap opera instead of my actual life. “But then I heard him talking with your brothers and saying that if you won’t obey him like a daughter, then he doesn’t have a daughter.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s going to try to kill me,” I reasoned.

My father was extremely hot-headed and was always talking in hyperbole.

“Right,” Alessia agreed. “But then I heard him say that he’d rather kill you himself than allow Matteo D’Angelo to continue to humiliate him by having you.”

Okay, yeah.

That was bad.

That definitely sounded like the kind of thing he would say right before ordering a hit on someone.

The only thing my father loved more than God, family, and money was his own sense of pride. He never let anyone get away with messing with that.

Not even me.

“He also said,” Alessia continued, “that if you wanted to live like a D’Angelo, then you could die like one.”

But there was one thing I didn’t understand.

“But how would killing me get back at the D’Angelos.”

“Apparently, Uncle thinks Matteo is really into you,” she explained. “Likereallyinto you. And seeing you two together tonight, I agree. I don’t know what kind of strange magic spell you cast on that man, but he hasn’t looked at anyone else all night.”

“So, he thinks that by killing me, he’ll break Matteo’s heart.”

Alessia shrugged. “Maybe. But knowing Uncle, it’s more likely he’s thinking that he’ll piss off Matteo bad enough to start the war that no one else wants.”

Yeah, that did sound more like my father’s logic.

Who cared who got hurt or how many people died as long as he was the one left standing tall at the end of the day.

“Do you think if I went home with you tonight and personally apologized to him, he’d forget all about this stupid war?”

“Are you kidding me?” Alessia pulled a face and shook her head. “The man straight up wants to kill you. Do you think I’m warning you just so you can run straight into his bullets?”

“No. Of course not.” I let out a long, defeated sigh. It had been such a wonderful night, but now I felt nothing but despair. “But there has to besomethingI can do.”

“I’m sorry to say it, but you’re screwed,” she said, drunkenly clasping me on the shoulder. “The only thing that would save you now is if you were to disappear into that convent of yours and never show your face in public again.”

And as much as I hated to admit it, Alessia was right.

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